Chapter Text
“This was not part of the plan.” Moon, Industrious
This was definitely not part of the plan. Not that Peter had really made a plan before tailing the two shady-looking guys to an abandoned warehouse, but that was really just beside the point.
He didn’t really have time to change into the suit before following them, but it hadn’t really mattered. He was a scrawny-looking kid without the suit, and the henchmen hadn’t spared him a second glance on the subway. He was able to follow them from a few blocks away after that, thanks to his enhanced senses, so he didn’t really need to change into the suit until they’d reached the warehouse itself.
Peter had slipped into a nearby alleyway, close enough that he could still hear them talking. They were using lots of keywords that he’d come to associate with drug cartels- shipment, package, drop-off times, and payment points. He’d managed to slip into his suit in record time- the chilly air of New York in late October was a great motivator.
He was fumbling around in his backpack for the mask- where was it? He really needed to get better about organization, honestly- when a black sedan with heavily tinted windows pulled up in front of the warehouse. Two more men came out of it, both looking armed and dangerous. Bob and Larry, Peter dubbed them. It was much easier to keep track of the bad guys in a fight when you named them. Plus, he got bored easily.
Anyway, Larry pulled one of the rear doors of the sedan open, and pulled out a young boy. He was blindfolded and gagged, with his hands tied behind his back. Peter felt a rush of fury- the kid didn’t even look old enough to be in middle school yet.
So, not drugs then. Human trafficking, maybe. Peter’s shiver had nothing to do with the chilly autumn air this time around. He renewed his search for his mask, but still came up empty, and that’s when it dawned on him.
It was Monday. Ned had stayed the weekend with him. Ned, who liked to try on the mask and talk to Karen. Ned, who never put anything back in its proper place when he was done with it.
Dammit, Ned.
Okay, so, he had some well-armed bad guys, at least one hostage, and no mask. No mask meant no suit, and no suit meant no powers. He also wouldn’t have access to Karen without the mask, either, and he really doubted his ability to stealth in and stealth out without her. Even if he could pull it off, the kid would see his face, and he wasn’t even sure if he was the only one these goons had taken.
Peter strained his senses again, listening in while he changed back into civilian clothes. He picked up a few more tidbits- Barry, one of the two original men he’d followed here, was on the phone with who he assumed was their boss.
Apparently the kid was the son of some liaison that worked in the Wakandan embassy. Peter screeched a little internally- the good points were that there was, in fact, only one hostage, and these goons were unlikely to shoot him any time soon. They needed to keep their leverage, after all. The downside was that this was likely just a small part of a larger scheme, and Peter really did not have the patience for this on a Monday.
He and Ned were going to have a long conversation tomorrow.
Peter took a deep breath, pressing his right thumb into his left wrist to keep the nausea at bay. His anxiety attacks were so much easier to deal with when he was wearing the suit. He’d even added prongs to his web-shooters that could push the pressure points for him.
Okay. He could do this. Get in, get the kid, get out. Easy peas-y.
---
It was not, in fact, easy peas-y. It was a pain in the ass, especially without using his webs. He was never mocking Hawkeye again- stealth missions were no joke. If Peter couldn’t stick to the walls or didn’t have his super strength, he actually would have cried a few times. Using the air vents helped a little.
There were way more guys hidden in there than the four that Peter had seen go in- Peter was almost tempted to ask where their spawn point was. He managed to slip past them and get to the kid, whose name was Dasi. This was the easy part.
Peter explained to Dasi that he was going to get him out, and that Dasi had to keep the blindfold on and stay quiet, no matter what. Dasi, apparently used to taking orders from his father’s body guards, was compliant, for the most part. The real struggle was that the poor kid had the worst case of motion sickness that Peter had ever seen. Being blindfolded, sticking to ceilings, and having motion sickness were a terrible combination.
They had to stop what felt like every two seconds to let the kid breathe and settle his stomach. Finding spots where they could rest like that and stay out of sight was proving to be the biggest challenge of the whole operation. Peter was just glad that the kid hadn’t asked for a potty break yet.
Getting to Dasi had only taken Peter about thirty minutes. It had been forty-five, and they were just starting to get close to the rear exit of the warehouse. Once they reached it, Peter slipped outside with Dasi, speaking quietly.
“Alright, we’re outside. Nobody’s out here, kiddo. I’m going to take the blindfold off for you in just a second. When I do, I need you to run as fast as you can straight down this street. There’s a library not too far from here, about two blocks away. Just keep going straight, and you’ll see it. When you get there, ask someone at the front desk to let you call your dad to come get you, okay?” Dasi nodded shakily. Peter had made him recite his father’s phone number to him earlier, both to be sure he had the information and to help calm the poor kid down.
“What about you?” Dasi asked, and his voice shook. Peter’s heart swelled a bit at the boy’s concern.
“Don’t worry about me, Dasi. I’m just going to stay behind for a few minutes, until you get far enough away. I’ll make sure none of these guys come after you.”
Dasi nodded, hesitantly, and Peter slipped the blindfold off of him. He climbed up the side of the warehouse to the roof as the kid ran, so he would have a better vantage point to keep an eye on the boy. He’d perched himself on the ledge of the roof, absorbed in calculating both how long it would take Dasi to run that far and how far away his book bag was, when his spider-senses started blaring.
It was a bit too little, too late, and Peter blurted out the only thing he could think of to keep the man on the other end of the barrel from pulling the trigger.
“Wait, you can’t shoot me! I’m Tony Stark’s son!”
---
It wasn’t exactly rare for Tony to get a call from Peter in the evenings. Usually the kid called Happy to give his report, but if he came across something more serious- like alien weapons- sometimes he’d call Tony directly. So, he didn’t really think anything of it when he answered Peter’s call at six o’clock on a Monday.
“Hey, kid, what’s up?”
“Um, hey, Dad ,” and, yeah, Tony raised a brow at that. That was new, but, honestly, not unwelcome. “I, um, I ran into a bit of trouble- ow- uh- I mean, can you, can you send a driver to come pick me up? And like, a suitcase full of cash?”
“Underoos, are you high? Did you get involved in some underground fighting ring or something?” Peter hated asking for things. Tony didn’t think the kid would ask for things even if he were held at gunpoint.
“Uh, no, Dad , nothing’s wrong, I just, uh, lost a bet! Yeah, and I told them I would pay them some cash in a suitcase . And I’ll need someone to drive me home.” Okay, yeah, that was Parker for, ‘everything is wrong, please send help’. From the emphasis on the word suitcase- really, why Peter thought he was subtle, Tony would never know- Tony needed to suit-up and go save his ass. Maybe his thoughts about being held at gunpoint were a little too on the nose.
“Yeah, I got that, kiddo.” Tony sighed. “What address am I picking you up from?” He questioned, even as he pulled up the tracking on both Peter’s phone and the Spider-Man suit. Peter rattled off some address, which he also plugged into the map. Unsurprisingly, the address was all the way across town from where Peter was calling him from. Nevertheless, Tony would have a car sent out that way, just to make it seem like he was following directions.
“Okay, kid, it’ll be there in about half an hour. Are you going to want dinner? That Thai place you like is only about five minutes away from the penthouse.”
“That sounds great, Mr. S- I mean Dad .” Peter’s voice sounded relieved.
“I’m ordering now, son .” Yeah, Tony was never letting him live this down.
---
“Mr. Stark, I am so sorry -”
“Oh, I’m Mr. Stark now? And here, I thought I was Dad . Really, Pete, we were making so much progress!”
---
“You know,” Pepper started, giving Tony a pointed look over the rim of her glass. “You’re giving him an awful lot of crap for this.”
“Pep, he left the mask at home,” Tony pointed out. “He deserves every bit of it.”
Pepper raised an eyebrow and smirked at him. “I think you’re just trying to bully him into continuing to call you Dad.”
Tony sputtered, and Pepper laughed.